Ronnie O’Sullivan opens up about drugs, suicidal thoughts and troubled childhood | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV

Clutching the cue that helped ­ him win a record-equalling seven world championships, snooker ­legend Ronnie O’Sullivan is in a philosophical mood.

“I’m not scared of losing,” says the softly spoken 47-year-old maverick. “I’m not scared of failure. I’m not scared of losing anything anymore. So much has been taken away from me over the years that I’ve just got to the point where I feel bulletproof. As long as I’ve got two arms and two legs, I can survive. There’s nothing that can faze me.“

Unexpectedly beaten by Luca Brecel, the eventual winner of this year’s World Snooker Championship in Sheffield last month, the older and wiser Ronnie was politeness personified when his underdog conqueror came from behind to – surely only temporarily – delay his destiny of securing a record-breaking eighth world championship and finally surpassing Stephen Hendry’s seven titles.

Historically insular and prone to wild ­temper tantrums, such a high-profile capitulation earlier in his career might have seen Ronnie verbally abusing the match official or spectators. It might even have sparked a ­petulant threat to quit the sport altogether.

But this time, the man who still holds the world record for the fastest televised maximum 147 break in history (five minutes and eight seconds), magnanimously described his unstoppable Belgian opponent as “probably the most talented player I’ve ever seen”.

Brought up on the border between Essex and East London, Ronnie honed his early snooker promise while his father Ronnie Senior – “Big Ron’s the name, porn’s the game” – ran a string of sex shops in Soho, central London. The future snooker star made his first century break aged just ten, won the British under-16 championship at 13, and two years later had secured his first 147. A year after that, at 16, he turned ­professional. And then his world fell apart.

In early 1992, a row outside a King’s Road nightclub in West London ended with a man being stabbed to death with a six-inch hunting knife. Ronnie’s father was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, leaving his mum reluctantly in charge of the family pornography business and their son suddenly rudderless.

“After the initial shock, I realised that even if he was a saint in prison, I’d be 36 when he came out,” says Ronnie, who details his traumatic past in vivid detail in his new autobiography, Unbreakable. “That’s when reality hit me. I just thought, ‘I’ve lost my dad, my best mate, my biggest supporter, my biggest teacher, my biggest anchor’.

“My dad gave me belief when I had no belief and I just thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do it on my own’. I kind of lost my way.

Ronnie’s fragile mental state was further disturbed by an astonishing incident in 1996 when he was wrongly accused of kidnapping a young girl. It happened just yards from where today’s interview with the Daily Express is taking place, in Chigwell, the Essex town he still lives in with his fiancée, Footballers’ Wives actress Laila Rouass.

“It was like a scene out of The Sweeney,” recalls Ronnie, of the harrowing episode. “I was driving up there and then suddenly all the roads were sectioned off, there were about eight meat wagons, and people jumping out with guns. Then they chucked me in a van and started shouting, ‘Where is she? Where is she? You’ve been done for abduction!’ I just thought, ‘What the f*** are they on about here?’”

Ronnie says he was hauled into a police station, strip-searched, and dressed in a white paper suit for 24 hours while the police questioned him.

“Eventually, when the forensics gave them no alternative, after they’d processed the samples from my car, they admitted they’d got it wrong and dropped all charges,” he remembers.

“But when you were smoking as much weed as I was at that time, it certainly didn’t help with my paranoia.”

Months later, Ronnie’s situation became even more precarious when his Italian-born mother Maria was sent to prison for tax ­evasion, leaving him in sole charge of his 12-year-old sister Danielle and ill-equipped to cope.

Fuelled by relentless partying and a diet of McDonald’s, takeaways, Smirnoff vodka and increasing quantities of cannabis, his weight ballooned to 16 stone as he sought solace in hedonistic oblivion.

Six months later, his sister moved out to live with the family of her mum’s best friend, leaving a relieved but unravelling Ronnie free to focus on his own self-destruction.

Big nights became big weekends which became big weeks, with Ronnie’s alcoholic and narcotic overindulgence spiralling further and further out of control between snooker tournaments, eventually hitting ­rock bottom during an extended drink and drugs binge in Holland.

After 72 hours without sleep, doing “all the things you can do in Holland, pretty much interrupted”, he found himself wired and paranoid in a room full of total strangers, fearing for his very existence. “At that moment I genuinely thought I was going to die,” he recalls.

“But then I thought, ‘I don’t want to die here.’ I felt fat. I felt lost. I felt suicidal. I felt like I just didn’t want to be here anymore. It was a lonely, horrible existence, and during those seven years of benders and blackouts, I did a lot of damage.

“I’ve been in a rebuilding process ever since, but one thing it gave me was perspective. Because of everything that happened, I’m so much more grateful for where I am now, and I don’t take anything for granted.

“I could have been one of those young ­talented guys that die aged 27 or 28. You hear about those geniuses that die young and I could easily have been one of them.”

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Salvation eventually arrived through a combination of addiction therapy and a growing obsession with running, a physical and meditative pursuit he still practises daily.

His rehabilitation also ultimately produced two children – Lily, now 17, and 16-year-old Ronnie Jr from his relationship with Jo Langley – to add to his third child, daughter Taylor, now 27, from an earlier relationship.

Since 2012, Ronnie has been in a relationship with Laila Rouass. The couple split ­temporarily in early 2022, but are now very much back together, although wedding preparations may have to wait a little longer.

“We’re engaged. We’re a proper couple,” Ronnie explains. “We’re pretty much down the middle with everything and I suppose, at some point, we’ll have to do the business.”

There is an element of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, however.

Laila has pointed out to Ronnie that some couples are happily together for ten years before they get married and then split up immediately after the wedding.

“So maybe we should just stay how we are. Why rock the boat?” says Ronnie, who explains how the combination of his spontaneity and Laila’s calm is an irresistible ­concoction.

“We’re a great team. She lets me do my thing and I let her do hers and we’re both happy. She’s very, very understanding. She’s not as emotional or up and down as I am. It’s like having [goalkeeper] David Seaman at home; safe pair of hands. She’s got everything under control.”

Whether Ronnie eventually surpasses Stephen Hendry to become the undisputed greatest snooker player of all time remains to be seen. But what about life after snooker?

Ronnie certainly isn’t scared of the looming void. “I’ve got plenty to keep me busy,” he insists. “I might create my own senior’s snooker tour. I buy and sell art and I’ve had a property business for 30 years.”

At one point he even considered investing in care homes for the elderly. “But I ­was worried I might blow the lot if it didn’t ­
work out.”

Now, instead, he’s looking at developing an educational centre for children who need special supervision – a project he’s working on with his sports psychologist Steve Peters. He’s also written a series of crime novels: Framed, Double Kiss and The Break. Whichever route Ronnie takes, it’s clear the lessons he’s learnt through adversity will continue to bear fruit either on or off the snooker table.

“I’m not afraid to talk about my weaknesses, because I have tremendous belief in myself and my ability to perform well. If I perform well, then all those vulnerabilities don’t give my rivals the edge they think they need to get one over me.

“I’ll just say to those opponents, ‘You can come with all the game plans you like but once I start hitting you with pace and accuracy, you’ll crumble’.”

There’s no doubt Rocket Ronnie has ­survived some traumatic experiences over the years. But is he really, as his memoir ­suggests, unbreakable?

“I was broken a year ago,” he admits. “I lost a friend through cancer, a brain tumour, and that was devastating. And I could get some news about my family or my kids – something bad – and that could break me.

“If something happened to my children or someone I loved – and I don’t want to put a kiss of death on it – then of course there are some things that could break me. But those things would break anybody.”

More positively, though, Ronnie believes he is far more content in his day-to-day existence than he has been in a long time.

“I feel like I’ve got on top of stuff and I’m not needy for anything now,” he says optimistically. “I love my job. I’m comfortable with the simple things in life. I’m prepared to go without all the bells and whistles that ­everyone thinks you need.”

Recently he calculated that he used to win 30 per cent of the tournaments he entered, but nowadays that figure has dropped to between five and 10 per cent.

“So most of the time I’m losing. But what’s important is how you react to losing. The most important thing is to get back up from a loss and carry on.”

Suddenly, Ronnie is back in a philosophical mood.

“Losing doesn’t taste nice but ­it’s important medicine to take,” ­he concludes.

“Losing makes you stronger. You just need to be ready for when ­the snooker gods are looking down on you and telling you it’s your turn again.”

• Unbreakable by Ronnie O’Sullivan (Seven Dials, £22) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25